>I'm genuinely curious - what benefit do you see in letting people who can't pass a basic safety test own a gun?
The problem is what you call basic. Currently you have to know about the mechanics of the gun, storage of ammo, etc... The complexity of todays guns leads me to supporting a level of testing (ie, it's not immediately intuitive that when you eject a clip that a round may still be chambered and the gun is actually loaded)
But if the "basic" test starts requiring knowlege of the chemistry of gun powder, for you to be able to define what "grain" is and compute energy calculations based on it, etc... it becomes a tool for restricting ownership.
I've watched several TV shows from the ITMS on my 52" SD TV, and they looked just fine on there.
Every now and then I'll notice an artifact, but it flies by quickly enough that I just don't care. I'm watching for the story and content... I'm not watching to enjoy how crisp and clear each individual pixel is.
>I have the right to speak about this, I walk to work, drive a motor scooter for the majority of things, and once in a awhile I take my Honda S2000 out for a nice drive.
What effective MPG must you achieve in order to have the right to speak on the topic?
>Yes, the problem of "send this document to random people" is a real issue. >However, since OpenOffice has had a "create PDF" feature for ages, and since it produces really elegant PDFs, this is a solved problem.
Except when you explicitly want that person to make changes and send it back...
>WWJD? Well, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't buy an SUV. But if He did, I bet He'd know how to use the turn signal.
Actually, I figure he'd get a pretty big SUV. One or two SUVs is more fuel efficient for moving him and 12 disciples around, than using a dozen greener vehicles. Plus he went to alot of places that didn't have paved roads where having off-road capabilities built in might be handy =-)
>Are you telling me that through out all of high school you never said something like:
>"Another pop quiz? I wish the teacher were dead."
i don't think the OP was, but it doesn't matter.
The FACT is: If the kid killed the teacher everyone would be asking "Why didn't they pick up on it sooner?", and start cracking down even more.
I think the kid should get in trouble, but not suspending him for a semester.
Have him help clean the school, or just do Saturday school or something for a month.
Doesn't matter though. The post said "in no sense"... If someone believes that it's possible that someone could download something and not buy it, who would have bought it, then there is a sense of that word that exists.
Nitpicky? yes But hyperbole like that makes me look crazier to folks I talk to about this... ie, if I mention by objections to the current situation, I get lumped in with the "oh, you just want to use for free what someone else did for their job"/thief crowd.
Over here in California,you can video record pretty much anything you can see unaided in public. (You just may not be able to use it in court, or sell it to a paper or something depending on the specifics), but the recording in public itself is not illegal.
But you can't record the audio.
I wonder if he would have been OK if he hadn't recorded the audio.
>The problem of "But the gun is still near the chip" issue really won't come into play. You ever use an RFID keycard
You ever use one? How many times have you had to run that card by a second or third time? Is there any feedback letting you know that the system is working properly before you need to depend on it?
>A gun that ONLY YOU can fire (under most circumstances) and whose effects identify you as the shooter is a realy good idea, and actually goes a long way to legitimizing the home defense weapon.
Because, of course, my wife wouldn't need to be able to shoot it to protect the two of us. Or if a random stranger was downed during a mass shooting before he could take the baddie down, I can't grab it and have a go? Yes, I did phrase those a little cavalierly, but I can't imagine that obstacles such as these would save more lives than they could cost in the end run.
And to base this on technology? By the time i have pointed the gun at someone, I have already decided to shoot them. And I imagine that would enrage someone enough to want to return the favor. The gun is a last resort... when it doesn't work... there isn't anything else.
Random experiment I ran awhile back: I had a friend set an extra alarm clock in my room set for a random day in a one week time frame. (once for each test)
One time, I had a handgun with the trigger lock with the key in it. One time, I had a handgun with the trigger lock with the key stored separately. Another time, I had the same handgun in a safe nearby.
I practiced with both items until I could work them reasonably well with my eyes closed.
cue the random alarm...
I had a loaded ready for action weapon in my hand in something like 10 seconds when it was in the safe. (hard to measure without an objective observer) When i left the key in the trigger guard (I lived alone at the time, and only had it stored like this during the nights I was running the test), I had a similar response time. When I had the key separate from the trigger lock, it took me a good 30 seconds to get ready. And that was a really long 30 seconds.
And that was with practice. I absolutely refuse to use a trigger lock. I tried it... it's just too prone to not coming off in the middle of the night.
> Incidentally, the whole "cars kill more people than guns" analogy is DEEPLY flawed. Cars have a use other than killing people, to the point where car-as-weapon is a pretty rare use.
{shakes head} What?! Ah, the cars didn't mean to kill those people, so that doesn't count. Gotcha. The intent of the item is 100% irrelevant. Most people will have had sex sometime in their life. You can have sex in a car. You can't have sex in any gun that a private citizen can own (that I'm aware of). So, you are infinitely more likely to get killed while having sex in a car.
Just compare the the numbers when cars are used in every way that cars are used, to when guns are used in every way that guns are used...
Also note... the point isn't that guns aren't dangerous... it's that we have an irrationally strong bias of fearing them.
>That, to mee, suggests a need for a MUCH higher level of training, accountability, and safety than a car - whose primary purpose is to move you from one place to another.
Oddly enough, I go the exact opposite direction. I think, in general, guns should require much less training that cars. In cars, you become complacent because of how often you deal with them becuase of the ubiquity of experience. Gun usage is rare enough (even for the regular weekend hunters/shooters), that you are going to be paying more attention to what you are doing with a gun. Additionally, you are trained that "guns are meant to kill", which also should heighten you awareness when you have one.
In cars, you are more prone to use them while tired... lots of people die by falling asleep behind the wheel. Once you're asleep, the car acts on its own, so you need extra training to recognize situations in which the car will act on its own. I haven't read of any that died because they fell asleep using their gun.
A car is no big deal... nothing to worry about... yet, used as they are used, they kill hoardes of people all the time and it's just a statistic to us. One kid shoots up a school and it's the end of the world.
Sorry, but I imagine you'd keep one of the many processors very busy, with the rest left idling away. Now, spawn a thread for each processor running this, and you might have something =-)
>If you play the Xbox360 you are supporting terrorism/Fox News told me so
That reminds of of something the anti-SUV folks always make me wonder about... If driving a Ford Excursion supports terrorism, but driving a little Hyundai or something does not, where is the cutoff line?
Ah, cuz ol' Stevie did say to drop all attention paid to solving problems here. yep. We are incapable as a species of working on more than one problem at a time. yep. Having a backup plan is a bad thing because it distracts your focus from your main plan. yep.
Podcasting is not dependent on streaming. The fact that you can play back an MP3 stream while downloading it incidental to its purpose... that is, downloading it for later playback... possible on some sort of audio device, say, an iPod?
>I guess potential stalking could be a reason, but that goes a bit further than watching.
Yeah, but it's not far from that... We get used to having them on the border watching "them", later we get public access to cameras that watch public areas. I mean, c'mon, we paid for them, right?
To the other poster's point though... I don't like the idea of being watched without being able to watch either. Being able to see the other person gives you some insight into how the information is going to be used. I mean, if they're watching you, you can see where they are and have a chance at remembering them from some other instance where they've been watching you. You have cues to be suspicious about.
For the more paranoid, they may be reporting back to some headquarters that you are doing X at Y, and they may try to correlate that with what other observers are reporting about you as well, but it's very unlikely unless you're into something.
However, with cameras everywhere, it's not very difficult to do random tracking/profilng of people.
It used to be hard for the government to track all the phone calls I made...;-)
It is private, just not personal (as in it isn't just yours). For example, I can say something in private to someone, but once I've said it, we both own the message.
Agreed. Which means that unless I'm talking to the government, there's no reason they should be listening. They are on neither side of the conversation. They have no reason to hear anything I'm saying regardless of whether I have anything to hide.
And the reason it isn't private is because you didn't employ a form of encryption
I don't think it's reasonable to hold "encryption" to be the layer at which anything is private. I think you have to apply good ol' human expectations to the situation. Is talking to someone in my house private because the house effectively carries the encryption concept? Or is it private because most everyone expects it to be private? I think the "encryption" idea is a useful shorthand for illustrating our expectations, but it is not complete.
Application of encryption doesn't necessarily mean something is private. Maybe I begin speaking in a really obscure language in public... a form of encryption. Officers overhear that and realize that one of the can understand me. (They've broken my encryption). The fact that I chose such a rare language means I wanted the conversation private, yet I was in public. Which wins? Do I lose because my encryption was not strong enough? A post office clerk opens my letter (breaking that encryption), is he now free to do as he wishes because I chose a weak "encryption"? It just doesn't work that cleanly... you have to deal with the human/expectation element.
Just the fact that there exists a privacy agreement at all proves there is no inalienable right to personal privacy in this situation.
Just because you have a right doesn't mean it can't get trampled on. I have an inalienable right to live at the moment. However there are laws on the books disallowing people from impeding that right.
The existence of the agreement may just mean that they recognize that there are people who don't respect that rights of personal privacy, so they spell it out so we all have a common understanding of what we can expect in that environment.
Because those who would do the "snooping" do not own the channel either.
yep, gov't included
>'If they weren't private, there would be no need to define those as off limits' That's like saying there's no reason for laws.
Not at all. There's no need to explain to people that you are not allowed to paint the sky green. It just doesn't make sense... thus no need to legislate it. If they weren't private, people wouldn't feel intruded upon by the exposure, and wouldn't feel the need to explicitly say "This is private, stay out". Since they are private to some people, and since there are people with differing ideas of what constitutes private, there are laws in place to enforce a common understanding.
If a door-to-door salesman comes to you and tries to sell you a vacuum cleaner, does that mean he implies you need one, or is he just trying to sell you one? I maintain that in the world of politics, people are just selling, not accusing.
If I say I had a pencil on my desk, and that I knocked the pencil off my desk accidentally, the most logical place to look for the pencil would be the ground.
If he says that A->B, it is logical to assume B'->A'. It is also logical to assume that if he doesn't believe B'->A' that he either hasn't worded A thoughtfully enough, or hasn't actually thought through the implications of believing that A->B.
I submit that starting with "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about", adding in "That guy is worried about his privacy", and not coming to at least the temporary position that "That guy must have something bad to hide." takes some careful and fairly interesting logical thinking. An amount of effort not evidenced in his post. (Not meant to i
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>I'm genuinely curious - what benefit do you see in letting people who can't pass a basic safety test own a gun?
The problem is what you call basic.
Currently you have to know about the mechanics of the gun, storage of ammo, etc...
The complexity of todays guns leads me to supporting a level of testing (ie, it's not immediately intuitive that when you eject a clip that a round may still be chambered and the gun is actually loaded)
But if the "basic" test starts requiring knowlege of the chemistry of gun powder, for you to be able to define what "grain" is and compute energy calculations based on it, etc... it becomes a tool for restricting ownership.
You don't need a permit persé in CA, but you have to pass a basic safety test, which at the moment isn't at all tough. Still irks me though =-(
I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an effort to make those tests harder in order to reduce legal gun ownership...
I've watched several TV shows from the ITMS on my 52" SD TV, and they looked just fine on there.
Every now and then I'll notice an artifact, but it flies by quickly enough that I just don't care.
I'm watching for the story and content... I'm not watching to enjoy how crisp and clear each individual pixel is.
>I have the right to speak about this, I walk to work, drive a motor scooter for the majority of things, and once in a awhile I take my Honda S2000 out for a nice drive.
What effective MPG must you achieve in order to have the right to speak on the topic?
>Yes, the problem of "send this document to random people" is a real issue.
>However, since OpenOffice has had a "create PDF" feature for ages, and since it produces really elegant PDFs, this is a solved problem.
Except when you explicitly want that person to make changes and send it back...
If you want to separate services on separately patchable/administrable systems, this is still a win.
You're only buying one piece of hardware, and one support contract for that hardware.
> The problems we have aren't a result of where we live, but how we live.
I agree we have many problems that are a result of how we live, but they are not the only problems that threaten our survival.
Example: An asteroid strike is a potential problem that is a result of where we live, not how we live.
I must be out of it... I had to hit Google to figure out that didn't mean "Donkey Kong Patrol" or some such.
And, yes, a giant ape throwing barrels would probably keep the kids off my lawn!
Oh, c'mon. Half the time they were off road, their axle broke.
Then again, their transmission seemed to last much longer than mine.
>WWJD? Well, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't buy an SUV. But if He did, I bet He'd know how to use the turn signal.
Actually, I figure he'd get a pretty big SUV.
One or two SUVs is more fuel efficient for moving him and 12 disciples around, than using a dozen greener vehicles.
Plus he went to alot of places that didn't have paved roads where having off-road capabilities built in might be handy
=-)
>Are you telling me that through out all of high school you never said something like: >"Another pop quiz? I wish the teacher were dead." i don't think the OP was, but it doesn't matter. The FACT is: If the kid killed the teacher everyone would be asking "Why didn't they pick up on it sooner?", and start cracking down even more. I think the kid should get in trouble, but not suspending him for a semester. Have him help clean the school, or just do Saturday school or something for a month.
>But was it a reasonable for him to feel threatened after the police and the doctor had investigated the situation?
Did the teacher report the situation only after getting the police and a doctor to evaluate? Sounds backwards to me
Doesn't matter though. The post said "in no sense"...
If someone believes that it's possible that someone could download something and not buy it, who would have bought it, then there is a sense of that word that exists.
Nitpicky? yes
But hyperbole like that makes me look crazier to folks I talk to about this... ie, if I mention by objections to the current situation, I get lumped in with the "oh, you just want to use for free what someone else did for their job"/thief crowd.
Over here in California,you can video record pretty much anything you can see unaided in public. (You just may not be able to use it in court, or sell it to a paper or something depending on the specifics), but the recording in public itself is not illegal.
But you can't record the audio.
I wonder if he would have been OK if he hadn't recorded the audio.
> In no sense of the word can it be said that anyone here is being deprived of anything
By "Stealing" the music, you are depriving them of the income they would have received had you purchased it.
However much you may disagree with the logic, that is a sense of the word...
>The problem of "But the gun is still near the chip" issue really won't come into play. You ever use an RFID keycard
You ever use one?
How many times have you had to run that card by a second or third time?
Is there any feedback letting you know that the system is working properly before you need to depend on it?
>A gun that ONLY YOU can fire (under most circumstances) and whose effects identify you as the shooter is a realy good idea, and actually goes a long way to legitimizing the home defense weapon.
Because, of course, my wife wouldn't need to be able to shoot it to protect the two of us.
Or if a random stranger was downed during a mass shooting before he could take the baddie down, I can't grab it and have a go?
Yes, I did phrase those a little cavalierly, but I can't imagine that obstacles such as these would save more lives than they could cost in the end run.
And to base this on technology? By the time i have pointed the gun at someone, I have already decided to shoot them. And I imagine that would enrage someone enough to want to return the favor.
The gun is a last resort... when it doesn't work... there isn't anything else.
Random experiment I ran awhile back:
I had a friend set an extra alarm clock in my room set for a random day in a one week time frame. (once for each test)
One time, I had a handgun with the trigger lock with the key in it.
One time, I had a handgun with the trigger lock with the key stored separately.
Another time, I had the same handgun in a safe nearby.
I practiced with both items until I could work them reasonably well with my eyes closed.
cue the random alarm...
I had a loaded ready for action weapon in my hand in something like 10 seconds when it was in the safe. (hard to measure without an objective observer)
When i left the key in the trigger guard (I lived alone at the time, and only had it stored like this during the nights I was running the test), I had a similar response time.
When I had the key separate from the trigger lock, it took me a good 30 seconds to get ready. And that was a really long 30 seconds.
And that was with practice.
I absolutely refuse to use a trigger lock. I tried it... it's just too prone to not coming off in the middle of the night.
> Incidentally, the whole "cars kill more people than guns" analogy is DEEPLY flawed. Cars have a use other than killing people, to the point where car-as-weapon is a pretty rare use.
{shakes head} What?!
Ah, the cars didn't mean to kill those people, so that doesn't count. Gotcha.
The intent of the item is 100% irrelevant.
Most people will have had sex sometime in their life. You can have sex in a car. You can't have sex in any gun that a private citizen can own (that I'm aware of).
So, you are infinitely more likely to get killed while having sex in a car.
Just compare the the numbers when cars are used in every way that cars are used, to when guns are used in every way that guns are used...
Also note... the point isn't that guns aren't dangerous... it's that we have an irrationally strong bias of fearing them.
>That, to mee, suggests a need for a MUCH higher level of training, accountability, and safety than a car - whose primary purpose is to move you from one place to another.
Oddly enough, I go the exact opposite direction.
I think, in general, guns should require much less training that cars.
In cars, you become complacent because of how often you deal with them becuase of the ubiquity of experience.
Gun usage is rare enough (even for the regular weekend hunters/shooters), that you are going to be paying more attention to what you are doing with a gun. Additionally, you are trained that "guns are meant to kill", which also should heighten you awareness when you have one.
In cars, you are more prone to use them while tired... lots of people die by falling asleep behind the wheel. Once you're asleep, the car acts on its own, so you need extra training to recognize situations in which the car will act on its own.
I haven't read of any that died because they fell asleep using their gun.
A car is no big deal... nothing to worry about... yet, used as they are used, they kill hoardes of people all the time and it's just a statistic to us.
One kid shoots up a school and it's the end of the world.
I just don't get it.
Sorry, but I imagine you'd keep one of the many processors very busy, with the rest left idling away.
Now, spawn a thread for each processor running this, and you might have something =-)
>If you play the Xbox360 you are supporting terrorism /Fox News told me so
That reminds of of something the anti-SUV folks always make me wonder about... If driving a Ford Excursion supports terrorism, but driving a little Hyundai or something does not, where is the cutoff line?
May not have been the first mp3 player, but was the first one everyone and their mother heard of.
> To count on leaving this planet
;-)
Ah, cuz ol' Stevie did say to drop all attention paid to solving problems here. yep.
We are incapable as a species of working on more than one problem at a time. yep.
Having a backup plan is a bad thing because it distracts your focus from your main plan. yep.
Gotcha
Podcasting is not dependent on streaming.
The fact that you can play back an MP3 stream while downloading it incidental to its purpose... that is, downloading it for later playback... possible on some sort of audio device, say, an iPod?
>I guess potential stalking could be a reason, but that goes a bit further than watching.
;-)
Yeah, but it's not far from that...
We get used to having them on the border watching "them", later we get public access to cameras that watch public areas. I mean, c'mon, we paid for them, right?
To the other poster's point though... I don't like the idea of being watched without being able to watch either.
Being able to see the other person gives you some insight into how the information is going to be used.
I mean, if they're watching you, you can see where they are and have a chance at remembering them from some other instance where they've been watching you. You have cues to be suspicious about.
For the more paranoid, they may be reporting back to some headquarters that you are doing X at Y, and they may try to correlate that with what other observers are reporting about you as well, but it's very unlikely unless you're into something.
However, with cameras everywhere, it's not very difficult to do random tracking/profilng of people.
It used to be hard for the government to track all the phone calls I made...
Was very profitable for some... got bought by other competing companies, which were eventually bought by AOL.
It is private, just not personal (as in it isn't just yours). For example, I can say something in private to someone, but once I've said it, we both own the message.
Agreed. Which means that unless I'm talking to the government, there's no reason they should be listening. They are on neither side of the conversation. They have no reason to hear anything I'm saying regardless of whether I have anything to hide.
And the reason it isn't private is because you didn't employ a form of encryption
I don't think it's reasonable to hold "encryption" to be the layer at which anything is private. I think you have to apply good ol' human expectations to the situation.
Is talking to someone in my house private because the house effectively carries the encryption concept? Or is it private because most everyone expects it to be private? I think the "encryption" idea is a useful shorthand for illustrating our expectations, but it is not complete.
Application of encryption doesn't necessarily mean something is private. Maybe I begin speaking in a really obscure language in public... a form of encryption. Officers overhear that and realize that one of the can understand me. (They've broken my encryption). The fact that I chose such a rare language means I wanted the conversation private, yet I was in public. Which wins? Do I lose because my encryption was not strong enough?
A post office clerk opens my letter (breaking that encryption), is he now free to do as he wishes because I chose a weak "encryption"?
It just doesn't work that cleanly... you have to deal with the human/expectation element.
Just the fact that there exists a privacy agreement at all proves there is no inalienable right to personal privacy in this situation.
Just because you have a right doesn't mean it can't get trampled on.
I have an inalienable right to live at the moment. However there are laws on the books disallowing people from impeding that right.
The existence of the agreement may just mean that they recognize that there are people who don't respect that rights of personal privacy, so they spell it out so we all have a common understanding of what we can expect in that environment.
Because those who would do the "snooping" do not own the channel either.
yep, gov't included
>'If they weren't private, there would be no need to define those as off limits'
That's like saying there's no reason for laws.
Not at all.
There's no need to explain to people that you are not allowed to paint the sky green. It just doesn't make sense... thus no need to legislate it.
If they weren't private, people wouldn't feel intruded upon by the exposure, and wouldn't feel the need to explicitly say "This is private, stay out".
Since they are private to some people, and since there are people with differing ideas of what constitutes private, there are laws in place to enforce a common understanding.
If a door-to-door salesman comes to you and tries to sell you a vacuum cleaner, does that mean he implies you need one, or is he just trying to sell you one? I maintain that in the world of politics, people are just selling, not accusing.
If I say I had a pencil on my desk, and that I knocked the pencil off my desk accidentally, the most logical place to look for the pencil would be the ground.
If he says that A->B, it is logical to assume B'->A'. It is also logical to assume that if he doesn't believe B'->A' that he either hasn't worded A thoughtfully enough, or hasn't actually thought through the implications of believing that A->B.
I submit that starting with "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about", adding in "That guy is worried about his privacy", and not coming to at least the temporary position that "That guy must have something bad to hide." takes some careful and fairly interesting logical thinking. An amount of effort not evidenced in his post. (Not meant to i